"Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is *sshole driven development. All wisdom, logic or process goes out the window when Mr. A is in the room, doing whatever idiotic, selfish thing he thinks is best. There may rules and processes, but Mr. A breaks them and people follow anyway."

Of course, one should look to themselves and their own team first to make sure that you're (or me, for that matter) not Mr. A.

I've worked at places that seemed to promote what I've called Flaming Potato Development, also called "Not My Problem (NMP)" Development in the comments on Scott's Blog:

"...in which all complex, complicated, expensive, or otherwise troublesome decisions/features/issues are pushed into someone else’s module?"

Great stuff, do check it out. Also, I encourage you to check out Scott's book on The Myths of Innovation, it's supposed to be pretty good, I'll be picking up a copy this weekend.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

Most developers have strong opinions because they place value on intelligence. Or at least what they think is intelligence, which is good enough. In the work environment, those strong opinions tend to get up, walk around and bump into each other. In that scenario, someone's opinion has to be more valuable to upper management than everyone else's. Otherwise, you just end up with gridlock.